Also helpful would be stories of how other Monks broke through the barrier from "I know Perl" to being an accomplished Perl developer.

i'm still breaking through. i've been coding professionally for somewhere around 5 years, and i still find there are things i don't know, *should* know, etc. it all comes with the work and the exposure.

for *some* random ( and OT ) reason, i finally started to understand what tie was really for .... while i was driving to get smokes, when i had been thinking about many things *other* than perl ...